The present invention relates to a packing device for transporting a long conveyor belt, and a conveyor belt wound (for shipping) over and across a pair of components of the packing device, the components being in the shape of spectacles.
When a conveyor belt is used to transport, for example, coal, ore, cement, etc., the overall length of the conveyor belt is very long, for instance, several kilometers in ordinary circumstances. Hence a conveyor belt for such an application is produced by joining a number of conveyor belts of an appropriate length. Joining conveyor belts, however, takes much time. It, therefore, is desirable to use the longest possible conveyor belts so as to reduce the time required for joining the belts to a minimum. To meet this requirement, it is necessary to ship the longest possible conveyor belts from a manufacturer to a customer.
In the past, a shipping or packing device such as that shown in FIG. 10 has been used to transport a long conveyor belt. The device had a structure of a so-called bobbin 21 where radially extending discs 24 were fixed to both ends of a take-up drum 23 for a conveyor belt A, and an opening 25 for passing a shaft 28 therethrough was provided in the center of the discs 24 and through the drum 23. With the shaft 28 in place through the opening 25 of the discs 24, sling wires Y were placed over both ends of the shaft 28, and the bobbin 21 was lifted by a crane C or the like, by means of the sling wires Y, and then placed on a bed. Stoppers or blocks 27 were placed on both sides of the bottom of the bobbin 21 (the discs 24), and the bobbin 21 was fixed to a shipping pallet 29. After that, the sling wires Y were removed from the shaft 28, and the shaft 28 was taken out.
The above-mentioned conventional packing device had the following problems: (1) During packing and handling, it was necessary to put the shaft 28 through the opening 25 of the bobbin 21 and take out the shaft 28; such operations took much time and were very dangerous since the bobbin 21 could roll on the packing pallet. (2) Because the height (diameter) of the bobbin 21 is limited for transportation by the regulations governing roads, etc., the length of the conveyor belt was, in turn, limited by the maximum height of the bobbin 21.